David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

She glanced up as she reached the top of the first tier: the late King Cervoran had gotten to his feet again and was wallowing down the middle flight of steps. "Help…," he squeaked.

Ilna continued toward him. Apparently she'd been wrong about funerals. That wasn't her first mistake, but each one made her angry with herself.

She began breathing through her mouth. The wind shifted slightly and wreathed her in smoke; she felt the hair on the back of her neck shrivel.

"Me…," the corpse said.

Close up King Cervoran still looked like a corpse of several days, but he was quite obviously alive. The coins that'd covered his eyes were gone. The whites and irises both had a yellowish hue, but the pupils were feverish and bright; they focused on Ilna.

Cervoran's lips were violet under the smear of the undertaker's rouge; the tongue between them was black. He repeated, "Help… me…"

Peasants aren't squeamish. Ilna took Cervoran's left wrist in her hand and wrapped his arm over her shoulders. It was like handling warm wax which smelled of decay. She wondered if the arm would pull out at the shoulder; it didn't, at least not just now.

Heat hammered her as the fire roared to full life. A ball of flame flared at Ilna's side and vanished, an outrider of the main blaze. Before she started down, she pulled Cervoran along the tier to put the bulk of the pyramid between them and the fire. She could feel the back of her tunics searing and shrinking. The cloth would be brown and brittle after this, no use even for wiping rags.

Of course that assumed therewas an after…

Cervoran didn't fight her, but he was barely able to keep his feet under him. She dragged him along. "Yes…," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it pierced like a bradawl.

They reached the staircase down the north side, opposite where the boy'd lighted the fire which was now waving like a banner over the bier. Ilna was beginning to feel Cervoran's weight in her knees.

Because this was a formal event she wore sandals, which she wouldn't normally do in weather so warm. She caught her left heel stepping down and had to throw her right leg out to keep from pitching onto her face with the former corpse on top of her. Cervoran twisted, trying to help but unable to move his legs quickly enough. It was like carrying a desperately sick man.

They were midway down the middle tier, some twenty feet about the ground, when Ilna felt the pyre collapse with a roar behind them. A column of sparks shot skyward, then mushroomed and rained back.

The pyramid was a stack of hurdles with no internal structure. When the flames ate away the bundled brushwood on the south, the whole thing fell toward the bleachers.

Ilna felt the staircase tilting backward. The stringers were lifting from the ground, threatening to catapult her and Cervoran back into the flames.

Ilna leaped off at an angle, pulling Cervoran along with a strength that'd have surprised anyone who hadn't seen her work a heavy double loom with the regularity of a windmill turning. Her right shoulder brushed the top of the lowest stage. The impact rolled her and her burden so that the late king hit the ground sideways an instant before she did.

There was a shock and asmack like a bundle of wet cloth thrown onto stone. Ilna rolled reflexively and was up again before she knew whether she'd been hurt by the fall.

She hadn't. The pyre was still tumbling into a state of repose, bales of brushwood rolling onto the blazing coals of those that'd ignited earlier. Men were shouting. A soldier tried to grab Ilna, but she slapped his hand away.

The chamberlain and another palace official caught King Cervoran under the arms and began carrying him away from the fire. The fall didn't seem to have hurt him, but that was hard to tell. Cervoran's legs moved as well as they had before. Ilna walked along through eddies of soldiers and a scattering of local civilians, looking for someone she recognized.

"I am…," the late king said shrilly. "I am…"

"Your highness?" said the chamberlain, his own voice rising. "You're King Cervoran."

"I am Cervoran!" the corpse cried. "I am Cervoran!"

"Ilna!" Liane said, catching Ilna's wrists in her hands. Garric's fiancee was usually composed, but her features had a set, frightened look now. "Have you seen Garric? What's happened to Garric?"

Garric walked onward, certain only that he had to keep moving. He didn't feel his bare feet touch the gravel, but he supposed they must be doing so.

He was walking toward a goal. He didn't know what it was or how far away it was, but heknew he had to go on. His head buzzed and his vision was blurry, and he kept putting one foot in front of the other.

There was a figure beside him. He wasn't sure how long it had accompanied him. He turned to it and tried to speak; his tongue seemed swollen.

"Who are you?" the figure asked. It was a man, but Garric couldn't make out his features or clothing because of the spider web clogging his eyes.

"I'm Garric," he said, forcing the words past his dry lips. "I'm Prince Garric of Haft, Lord of the Isles."

"Prince Garric?" said the other figure. It was leaving him, fading into the hazy shadows the same way it had appeared. "Prince Garric was the last King of the Isles. He and his kingdom have been gone for a thousand years…"

Garric walked. There was light in the distance, but the foggy darkness was close beside and behind him.

Garric took another step forward. The air was chill and humid, suddenly filled with the odors of life and decay. His foot splashed ankle-deep in muck, throwing him forward. His brain was too numb to keep him upright, but at least he managed to get his arms out. He landed on all fours instead of flopping onto his face.

Endless grayness had become fog-shrouded sunlight.

Something hooted mournfully beyond the mist. He couldn't tell how far away it was or even be sure of the direction. The sun was a bright patch in the thick clouds almost directly overhead.

Garric stood carefully. He was stark naked, but so far as he could tell he hadn't been hurt by whatever'd happened. He had a memory of falling into the cloudy heart of the topaz, but he also recalled seeing the diadem bouncing on the ground beside his helmet and tunics. Both those things couldn't be true.

"And maybe neither is, lad," said King Carus. "But we're not on First Atara now, nor anyplace I've been before."

The animal hooted again. It didn't sound especially dangerous, but it was certainly big. Even if it were vegetarian, whatever hunted it would be large enough to be dangerous to an unarmed man…

Garric made a more focused assessment of his surroundings, looking for a weapon. A branch stuck out from a fallen tree. He gripped it with both hands, but it crumbled instead of providing a club.

Trees three or four times Garric's height were scattered over open marsh. The trunks all tapered upward from thick bases, but their foliage varied from needles and fronds to long serpentine whips.

He generally couldn't see more than ten feet in any direction, but swirls and eddies in the mist gave him occasional glimpses out as far as a bowshot. The distant terrain was low-lying and muddy with patches of standing water, more or less identical to the patch on which Garric stood.

It was raining, though it'd taken him a moment to realize that because the air was already so sopping wet. He started to laugh. Aloud, though there was nobody around save the king in his mind, he said, "Well, I've been in worse places, but I won't pretend this is a good one."

"Keep your eyes open, because this is the sort of place that can get worse fast," said Carus. His image grinned in amusement. He and the blue sky above the rose-twined battlements where he stood were all created by Garric's imagination. "There's times I don't mind not having a body any more."